Nick Clegg: No Longer the People’s Liberal Democrat

By Iain Martin

Back when Cleggmania was at its height, about a fortnight ago, I observed that it reminded me of the Diana moment. The Lib Dem leader was the vehicle for an expression of widespread disgust with the Westminster establishment and its supposedly relentless protection of its own interests.

As with Diana when she was taking on the royal establishment, it is curious for Clegg to claim to be an outsider. She was an aristocrat raised to live a life of extraordinary privilege, yet presented herself quite differently. Clegg is a product of a different branch of the establishment (father a banker, Westminster, Oxbridge, the European Union via his family’s friends and then Parliament) but his pitch is constructed to suggest he is other.

On the campaign trail, he has even started to sound a little like Princess Diana — echoing her plea for decisions to be made on the basis of emotional intelligence rather than considered rational exploration of the various options. “Vote with your heart,” he told voters and interviewers yesterday. When I heard him say it, it brought me up sharp.

Vote with your heart? Even discounting that this is an extraordinary election and that the participants are very tired, it is still a revealing statement. It is the voice of Diana-ism, a pre-enlightenment rejection of rational judgments in favor of pure feeling. She wanted to be the “Queen of People’s Hearts.” He tells voters not to bother voting with their heads as though he is auditioning to be the “King of People’s Hearts.”

But will he be so crowned? It starts to look very much as though the answer is no and that Cleggism is receding from its high watermark.

John Rentoul deconstructs the mistakes that Clegg has made since he burst through to change the shape of this race. He says: “Clegg has blown it, after all that.” The Lib Dem leader made the mistake of throwing away his bargaining power mid-campaign, and his statements leave him committed to allowing Cameron the chance to govern if the Tories are the largest party on Thursday (as looks most likely).

Clegg is still very popular personally, but his party has not benefited from the increased scrutiny his fame has attracted. All of the three parties have factions. All of their policy programs are the result of internal compromises. They are all coalitions of interests. But the Lib Dems have the biggest spread of views: ranging from the Orange book economic liberals to the knit-your-own-yogurt beardies at the other end of the spectrum. This has become more obvious under a brighter spotlight.

I am not writing Clegg off. He has electrified his campaign, and there are still four days to go. But what seemed possible, that he would break through into the low to mid 30s and transform the landscape, now doesn’t seem likely.

I suspect there are several other reasons for the party slipping back in the polls a bit and the excitement around Clegg waning. Here are three:

Clegg put in a poor third debate performance. He was the model of a cool, calm and collected leader in the first two debates, but Brown and Cameron worked to squeeze him out last Thursday. He responded by raising his voice and sounding strained. He was put on the spot very effectively at several key moments by Cameron and Brown. It would be odd if this had had no impact.

The wider Lib Dem campaign has not been very effective. It is as though party strategists were as much taken by surprise as everyone else by their man’s success in the first debate. Clegg has continued to be relaxed and generally strong on the trail, but back in London the party should have flooded the gaps left by their enemy (the two old parties) with initiatives and practical populist policy pronouncements to emphasize there was more to this than a post-debate bubble. They didn’t.

Fashions can change very quickly. At first his “listen to the terrible other two squabbling, I’m not like them, it needn’t be like this, hey, let’s all get round the table and sort it out” sounded fresh. On repeated hearing it probably starts to pall for all but the most excited. AA Gill captures it well in his account of the circus at the leaders debate last Thursday at Birmingham University. He writes:

“On the way out I ask a wearily slumped security guard what he’s made of it all: ‘I’ve only known him three weeks but I already hate that Clegg bloke.’”

Comments (5 of 8)

Very good article. It’s a shame the 3 parties put up candidates in seats where they have no chance. Lib Dems ‘pile up wasted votes’ because Lab and Conservatives vote for them where their man (increasingly alas woman) has no chance. This is not a vote of confidence in the Liberals who are the A.N. Other party an unknown quantity, a tabula rasa on which each elector writes what he chooses. Not so much a party as a fantasy.

11:35 am May 4, 2010

Mark2 wrote :

Silent Hunter
Actually the last 60 yeasr have been good ones for most people in the UK and there is no evidnce of which I am aware that suggests PR would have made things any better.

5:45 pm May 3, 2010

OrdinaryWoman wrote :

I'd agree with the lightweight comment. The LibDems seem so overcome by their unexpected X-factor popularity that they haven't had time to put together much more than crowd-pleasing soundbites. Nick Clegg's comment about Dave measuring No 10 for curtains was childish - very like the nah, nah, nee, nah, nah sort of comment that our failing PM and co are coming out with, for lack of any real arguments - and breathtakingly hypocritical after so often sniping that the Tories haven't got / won't give any idea of their future plans....

9:31 am May 3, 2010

malone wrote :

silent hunter

Why should Irene have to elaborate? Clegg is lightweight. Maybe she only has time for a passing comment and not a 20 minute essay to show how she has reached that conclusion. The conclusion is no less valid for lack of the supporting statement.

4:54 pm May 2, 2010

Daffid wrote :

I think you're taking the 'vote with your heart' line out of context. He said it when asked if people should vote tactically, and quite rightly, he didn't want to be caught out and have it used as a weapon against him by both sides.

I don't think the 3rd debate hurt him, but nor do I think it helped. He did miss a lot of open goals in the 2nd and 3rd debates, he should have been a lot more aggressive.

The one point I definitely agree with is that the wider Lib-Dem campaign has been very poor.They have a wonderful opportunity against a hugely unpopular PM at the end of the road, and a weak Conservative candidate with a lousy manifesto, and yet they've totally failed to respond in the media in the last two weeks. They've allowed their policies to be misrepresented, and all the airtime seems to be flowing to the Conservatives. Very sloppy indeed.

Although isn't it tragic that all commentators are commenting on...his how things are presented. The assumption seems to be that style is more important than substance and we just have to accept that. I for one don't. The Conservative manifesto has tumbleweeds blowing through it. The Labour manifesto is heavy on the usual micromanagement that they pass off as substance, all of which begs the question - why didn't you do any of this sooner? What we needed was some proper debates, not the TV gameshows we were given. Full analysis of the manifestos, with both leader and chancellors speaking (so the Conservatives couldn't hide their weak link away), that's what was needed.